Flipnote Studio: Like an Animation YouTube for Nintendo DSi

Flipnote Studio for the Nintendo DSi is a free, downloadable app which just became available in the North American market, and if you like doodling even a bit, you’ll want to check it out. The software turns the DS stylus and touchscreen into a drawing pad with numerous pages, letting you create flip book-style animations, the kind a lot of us used to make during boring elementary school classes. But it’s more than that: You can also use the DSi’s internal microphone to add a soundtrack to your mini-movie, and employ the gaming console’s camera system to incorporate photos into it.

That’s just the start, because you can then upload your animations from the DSi to Flipnote’s web site, where they’re viewable by others on a system which filters user contributions by popularity, views, ratings, and response comments. In other words, it’s pretty much a YouTube for flip book animations. (The videos are even embeddable on other sites.)

Only a day after the U.S. launch, there’s already a number of genuinely engaging, impressive animations (amid the usual thicket of dross.) Unsurprisingly, there are even more epic animations from Flipnote users based in Japan, where it’s been available since last December.